Proton spin in a light-cone chiral quark model

Abstract

We discuss the spin structure of the proton in a light-cone treatment of the chiral quark model. Based on the fact that the quark helicity ($\Delta q$) measured in polarized deep inelastic scattering experiments is actually the quark spin defined in the light-cone formalism, rather than the quark spin ($\Delta q_{QM}$) defined in the conventionally quark model (or in the rest frame of the nucleon), we calculate the $x$-dependence of the polarized quark distribution functions $\Delta q(x)$, and the polarized structure functions $g_1 (x)$. Special attention is focused on the Melosh-Wigner rotation due to the transversal motions of quarks inside the nucleon and its effects on the bare quark input. It is shown that our results match the experimental data well.Comment: 11 latex pages, 8 figures, final version published in PR